itch.io

Very cute start of a game and a very cool take on the theme, I'm digging the mechanic and can think of a whole myriad of ways this could go. I'm imagining something puzzle'y where you have to go between different rooms to find the dollhouse toys you need, and to find old pictures that clue you in on how the rooms used to be furnished.

Would love to see this further developed after the jam.

It's as if worker exploitation combined with the Human Centipede in space.

I'm sorry what? My mind went to a weird place then.
I like this game! It's cute and simple, and using the theme of "scale" to mean "scale up the team" is a cool take. Now we just need to not think too much about the horrific working conditions of these aliens.

I love everything about this game, from the gameplay, the music, the goofy graphics, the title screen that just hits you in the face with the main hero; and the tiny details like the record scratch when killing the first enemy or the music volume changing when you enlarge the music players.

My only pointer would be that the boss fight might need some polishing. There were a few times where I got trapped under boxes and it was a little bit frustrating to get out of it since a box on your head kills your ability to jump; but that's a minor gripe that only shows up at the very end of the game. Easy 5s across the board, hope to see you in the top 100.

A very simple game on the surface, but with a fun mechanic after you get through the first levels. It was fun to try and balance the size of all spheres so that you don't get a small straggler that goes hyper bouncing around uncontrollably.

Simple but fun game. I agree with the other commenters in that the lighting and planets look stellar (*inter*-stellar perhaps? Hoho), though at the moment it's a bit too easy to get some early income and  start cranking out Frigates to make you untouchable. I'd also say the game is in dire need of a tutorial, it took me a few tries to realize what clicking the buttons did (I thought you had to place buildings down after selecting the button and was clicking everywhere on screen to no effect)

Overall though, great theme, I'd love to see this be developed further.

Thank you for the feedback and the kind comments!

We do agree with you on the push mechanic ending up a bit too powerful in the final version of the game. The "battery charge" used for both the push and the missiles was something we added relatively late. Before that there wasn't a limit or cooldown, and the missiles was a bigger focus for us, meaning the push remained largely untested. Your suggestion of the push breaking asteroids is an interesting one, and we'd certainly try that out if we decide to keep developing the game!

Thank you for the nice comments and the feedback!
The tactic you're describing is definitely something that was on our radar as we were developing the game. Our earlier build had the asteroids be sold entirely, but the feedback we got was that it was really jarring to have massive asteroids just pop out of existence; having them be broken up into tiny chunks which get ground up one by one felt a lot more satisfying.

Ultimately we decided on the current system, because whilst it might enable some cheesy tactics, those were still a lot more fun to discover and master. In a more fleshed out version of the game, we'd definitely try to address the issue in a way that still keeps the grinding effect.

Game's fun, art is fun, story is fun, but that all doesn't matter; what matters is

why'd you make me send so many poor little gooblins to die ;-; They just wanted to live their happy little goo lives

I love the idea you were going for, and the game is good fun. The thumbnail is an absolute treat, though I'm wondering if there might not be a bit too many game mechanics going on all at the same time. At times I was confused if I should focus on getting weapons, or if I should just try to get bigger.

Would absolutely love to see this become further developed though, nice work to the team!

Lovely animation and art style. Clean tutorial which I feel like many games miss out on. The immediate first level after the tutorial is a bit of a brain twister to throw at you so early, but I liked it and it felt very satisfying to get through. The controls could do with a bit of polishing, there were a few times where the character just got stuck and I had to spam jump to get moving again.

Fun game, even if it took a good while to realize how the floors mechanic worked. I will say it has a bit of "tier 1 tower spam" problem, where I could solve every floor just spamming a handful of archers by the chokepoints. Still, solid entry.

Pretty fun take on the "block moving puzzle"-genre, I especially liked the idea of the green waiting block. The final level got my brain in a twist for a good few minutes.
My main gripe is that the connection to the theme seems kind of weak? I get the idea of powering up a bot which powers up a bigger bot which powers up a bigger bot and so on, but it functions as little more than a level transition screen.

Got to the stairs.
Noped out.
I can't handle scary games, so I don't know why I clicked on this.
Never got to see why the theme makes sense, doesn't matter.
9/10 would nope out again

There's a lot of potential here, though it's still quite rough around the edges. I really like where the art is going, and the pre-historic cave-man theme with dinosaurs is a setting we don't see often enough. I think the enemy design is great, the fact that they all attack you in very differently but predictably makes the gameplay feel chaotic in a good way.

It's true, even in space we can't escape the 9 to 5!

:3

The gameplay and the atmosphere seems to clash a little bit, when I first started it and was given a grappling hook I expected it to be a fast-paced platformer with a cyberpunk theme, but then the atmosphere kicked in and it felt more like a survival horror game.

Also there's controls for swapping items, but I never found any other items but I still beat the game, so.. Pro gamer speed run strats?

Really cool art design though, whoever made that intro screen should feel proud!

"Mother, my hat appears to be stuck to the ceiling"

Joking aside, I can see what you were going for, with the music, sound and animation you absolutely have potential to make something great.

Lovely art style, and funny characters. When we were discussing game concepts in my team we had the idea of a "game where you built with scales" but we scrapped the idea, super fun to see someone else think of that too!

Gameplay-wise, it can be very punishing to get started. A bad customer you can't satisfy with your starting scales combined with failing one fish spelled game over for me several times :(

Overall great concept though

Fun game, the music sounds like it's taken straight from an 8-bit Mega Man game.

The Drag-and-drop could use some tweaking, in my browser it had a really hard time registering, and I almost completed my first full run not realizing I could even move towers because nothing happened when I clicked on them (turns out the game is a lot harder when you can only go up to level 2 towers, and your first ones get deleted)

Overall very enjoyable though, played through it fully a couple of times once I got the hang of it

Nice and simple concept, executed well. I love the little celebration animation that comes out of the pipe once you're done

Cute intro cutscene. The gameplay and concept was neat, though I'm finding that there's a bit of a delay between hitting Left and Right and the character moving. I dunno if it's just my browser adding delay, but it made the game feel a bit unresponsive.

My initial reaction was "Well this looks pretty basic, doesn't it"
Fast forward to an hour later, I'm trying to figure out how to bounce one loose cannon into a off-placed redirector, just so I can unlock one more bomb which would unlock 3 more ores and then I could finally get those two more redirectors I need to---

Wonderful game, it feels like you created much with very little mechanics. Also zooming out to look at your network bring so much dopamine.

Sidenote, I think I found an exploit where you can point two ridirectors towards eachother and let them stockpile ore for a while before pointing it all into the mothership to get an instant boost in levels.

Cute and enjoyable game. It took me way too long to realize the flying monsters were collectables and not enemies you had to avoid, I kept thinking "Why would I ever go over there just to die?"

Very cool take on the theme, the controls took a little time getting used to, especially at run time. Overall enjoyable though, would deliver interstellar bananas again!

Wonderfully simple game, would love to have something like this on mobile for a quick and easy timekiller, easy full score all around from me.

I would die for Bill.

WHO keeps throwing all these BIRDS? I'm GLUING CARDS HERE

Wonderful game, love the art style, music and vibe. Controls took a bit getting used to, and there's a few QOL things I'd have loved to see, like being able to lock boxes in place so you don't accidentally knock them around (but I'm sure you know that, because, GameJam); but overall a great submission, played it all the way through.

I've no idea what I just played, but my eggplant is so big rn 🍆

Dropping a comment to say thank you for these amazing assets. I've been working on an RTS game now for the better part of the last year using this pack, and I've finally got a demo to publish, which would have been absolutely impossible for me without these assets. Thank you!

https://tobiashenriksson.itch.io/sector-terra

Thanks for checking our game out!
You're right, there's a bug in the game where the old 'default' instructions don't get wiped properly, so the raiders always keep the original strategy in mind regardless of any changes.

We released a post-jam version of the game where this bug is resolved, feel free to check it out here!

https://tobiashenriksson.itch.io/slaves-to-the-meta-post-gmtk-game-jam-version

We got back to the game again this morning and with a fresh set of eyes we figured out that the game was missing a whooping 3 lines of code which was breaking the entire game, but that's game jams for you.
We've now got a post-jam version if you want to check it out for the intended gameplay. We're intending to further update later down the line, happy raiding!

https://tobiashenriksson.itch.io/slaves-to-the-meta-post-gmtk-game-jam-version

Thank you! Our idea was that it should feel more like a puzzle than an action challenge

The pointer is not a you-issue I'm afraid, that's one of many (oh so many) bugs that were left unresolved before the time was up

Careful, you might get a dragon DDOSing your account

Yessssss

Please give us a gif version of that fuel-drinking animation, it's so precious

Absolutely wonderful game, I was initially confused what the challenge would be since it seemed too easy , but it turned out to be a great puzzle game with a deceptively simple set of rules towards the higher levels, alltogether wrapped with stellar presentation

Easy 5's across the board

I'm imagining this from the players' perspectives, teams are auto-balancing 17 times per match and the attacking team can't organize a focused push to save their lives

10/10 for realism